Great breakdown of the case. I was waiting for RISC-V to be mentioned at the end. If anything this might push future chip startups to lean in that direction. If ARM wins, the Nuvia purchase would most likely have a negative impact on any future startup looking to do something similar to Nuvia. At least with RISC-V there's a much higher chance of being aquired if they can help a chip maker be less reliant on ARM.

This is maddingly frustrating. I *really* wanted an ARM processor for software development that could compete with Apple silicon and maybe even x86. Nuvia seemed to be leading to this. ARM is squandering an opportunity. This reminds me of AT&T and BSD

Arm this is brilliant, this is exactly what we need to get everyone to move to the open source RISC-V architecture. This is essentially AT&T vs BSD Unix all over again... hold my beer, I'm going to make some popcorn. 🍿

Appreciate the coverage and insights. Heard a little bit about the situation here and there, but never really looked into it.

33:45 - that's me!

Thanks for the fair and level headed coverage and bringing in someone with a law background for stove well thought out commentary

This was a true nerd fest with Mr. Geerlings cameo at the end 😁

New recording gear? The quality is great!

Just imagine how Nvidia would have leveraged the ARM IP in the courts

I would put it this way: Arm PC is a Competitor to X86 AND keeps PC competitiv against (Arm)Mac so actually this lawsuit foremost is beneficial for Apple by delaying the maturity of serious ARM Desktop PCs, right? Can't help but have the feeling that ARM is burrying itself with this... smells like adobe, Nintendo, OneWheel, BMW,.... "the old business models are more and more failing but this anti consumer-behavior is doomed to collapse hard and ugly..." nostradamos ;)

Great Summary. Love the Server at Home addition form legal angle.

20:30 From what it sounds like, it absolutely seems to me like Arm is poisoning the well. If I had some influence in a company coming up with a long-term roadmap for some SoCs, this behavior from Arm would absolutely have me making contingencies to pivot to RISC-V if I wasn't already.

So essentially Qualcomm found a loophole and ARM doesn't like it so since we're both right let's go to court and find out who's more right. 😋

I noticed this background and recognized it and for a moment I thought I was going crazy and probably misremembered STH's Patrick new desk. IDK - anyway I look at this it looks bad for ARM. If they win, they will have such leverage over their customers that no-one will want to make new business with them. And no new companies will start. If they lose - well it is bad for ARM, because money. And they might be more cagey about licensing stuff. Damn Softbank. It is going to pop up RISCV. It would do more if it was more mature, but it will work in its favor regardless of what happens now.

Hey I know that guy! Fun times Ian! I cannot wait until you are back in town.

Nice to see a collab between you two 👍

Hi Ian, I'm surprised that you didn't mention the new Board members of Arm and what impact that may have. Adding Dr Paul Jacobs, the son of the legendary Dr Irwin Jacobs - (both ex Qualcomm CEO), is a smart move. Also adding Rosemary Schooler brings some Intel sales knowledge too. Add that to the appointment of the Apple designer Tony Fadell and it seems that the US team is gaining strength to deal with the Qualcomm issue. The tough year ahead for tech will hopefully force them to concentrate engineering effort on the future recovery and not get too embroiled in enriching lawyers who appear to have err'd on both sides. I'm no fan of Arm mgmt but prefer the semi leaders to recognise how much collaboration is necessary between them.

ARM is poisoning themselves with this lawsuit and my guess is that this is what Qualcomm is banking on. There's a middle ground which should be reached and I would hope that is what yes achieved. If I were negotiating terms as ARM, I would provision that any ALA contracts give joint custody of the generated IP which could be relicensed as a TLA design. ARM designs would continue to improve and acquire more capabilities and the TLA licenses would provide a mass market solution. The companies which built their systems using ALA would have a first to market advantage and the entire ecosystem could mature and become more power per instruction efficient. Long term we just to see advances which create more powerful and efficient designs. As the licensor, ARM still has a path to profit by encouraging a higher adoption of their cores. They are biting the hands which feed them if they win this suit.

I bet Qualcomm wasn't expecting that they'd be acquiring a lawsuit when they bought Nuvia. Yikes.

Great video with a unique inside view of how ARM's IP business works! Don't most, if not all, IP agreements contain very specific wording on what happens when a licensee gets acquired?

Having SiFive as a sponsor of this is great. I hope they catch up to ARM quickly

Fantastic breakdown and explanation

You're looking well. Good to see 👍

Really good video. This analysis is great

Seems pretty even overall... hopefully the case gets settled quickly, with Qualcomm and ARM agreeing to some moderately priced, additional license agreements.

I've been waiting for this... Thank you

This kind of situations will simply lead the future for hardware to be the same as has been for software lately, more open source standards. RISC-V stands to gain a lot from this license and patent fatigue that is sure to grow with such moves by ARM and others.

Now here's my question: what *exactly* does the Qualcomm ALA say? Specifically, does it say "code must be Qualcomm IP only" or "invalid in the event of a merger or acquisition" or anything to that effect?

Not sure how I feel about this, besides RISC-V getting more traction. Being an OpenSource guy, I think it would be nice to see so more open cpu efforts, without ending up with "too many options to choose from" side-effects.

Wow… Patrick, Ian, and Jeff in the same room! I’d be star struck.

Wait a minute! this background looks familiar, are you guys collaborating with Patrick?

I think you're right it's about money, but also there's a strategy of how much money can be made if the soc became commonly used in Windows.

If they can pull off good performance and power efficiency, RISC-V chips could become "the new ARM" in the end, in being the most-used chip solution, which would be great! =D

I haven't read the brief, but it seems like ARM simply want to force Qualcomm to renegotiate. The fact that they're continuing to support them (and that this is "orthogonal to the case") hints at this, although their support may be contractually obliged. I can imagine they had a chat beforehand and said "Look, sorry fellas but we need to sue you so we can get a bit more money out of this deal you've pivoted on." I expect Qualcomm will renegotiate for something costing somewhere between Nuvia's agreement and their own current agreement(s). Basically, it seems like a strong-arm negotiation tactic. (No pun intended!)

the nuvia acquisition sounds like a great idea for me to run as a linux desktop

Could you compare the technology and licensing of these chips with Graviton?

RISC-V on Windows PC desktop is inconceivable for the time being and a long time yet, ARM was hard enough. And at least ARM has the advantage of specs being rich and fixed in place, which is necessary when you have binary compatibility to deal with. But as far as server... well that looks like the beginning of the end for ARM. There won't be much visible for the next few years, but under the sheets, things would be brewing. Also interesting how ARM started with microcontrollers essentially... and is now rapidly losing them to RISC-V.

So this is rhe STH set, right? The CPU Max Pillow looks great. Do you know id there is a GPU Max pillow? Or any other square Intel logos?

Good luck to the judge, because holy hell what a mess this situation is.

I see you were filming at STH studio 👍 Edit: never mind didn't wait to end of introduction

Does Qualcomms translation layer work on Linux?

Lol, those multi-NIC miniPCs in the background did make me think of him...

Is it possible for me to design a manycore GPU on sifive since I want to get into HLSL and software rendering

I guess the next logical step for Qualcomm (and many other companies) is RISC-V. ARM proved it is not impossible to introduce brand new hardware platform for mobile, consumer and server market.

Is this your new studio? Looks nice! :) Ah, it's Patrick's... Anyway, thank you for the in-depth explanation. Doesn't this cause any problems for an ongoing lawsuit?

@28:12 - That support was paid for by Nuvia; ARM can't take that back or ask for another payment for said support.

👍 Have you any reviews/videos on Tachyum as a player in market for server chips? Cheers.

Arm architecture is definitely the future for the coming decade. Qualcomm pushing Nuvia to go desktop is the logical next step, simply because of the power to performance ratio that x86 just hasn't been able to demonstrate. Arm sees the opportunity that Qualcomm+Nuvia unlock and wants to dip their hand into the honey jar, Pooh style. As far as arm servers are concerned, the future to me seems to be pointing in the direction that Graviton is going imho.

26:20 but what about greggs? some places in the UK you dont even need to get to the other end of the street to find another

I don't understand why the FTC doesn't step in at least within any division of ARM based in America... They are a monopoly on reduced instruction sets with the only alternative being RISC-V.

Could the required support from ARM be like a software key to enable certain key features of the core design into each chip?🤔

Windows doesn’t have a place where to put libraries so it’s actually not there fault and if your emu can’t deal with different paths you should reach reconsider how you designed it.

So the TLDR is Qualcomm didn't get the appropriate license that covered everything what Nuvia dose before merging the two companies, and now trying to use their own incomplete license which had lower royalty rate on Nuvia's design. Of course ARM will sue them, especially now ARM are starved of cash after acquisition deal with NVIDIA was killed partially due to opposition from Qualcomm.

It's actually pretty simple if Nuvia did have some closure in theirs lincese contract, that nobody except Nuvia have right to use the tech of ARM, then 100% Qualcomm will get a problem, but when the license agreement is not transparent, then Qualcomm always can say that they as owners of Nuvia have full right and all IPs which belonged to Nuvia belong to Qualcomm.

You have upgraded your setup and quality substantially or I have missed a few videos

From the headlines I thought it was likely that ARM gave Nuvia a favorable licensing (or whatever) deal. As Nuvia, while having some clout, personal and funding wise were trying to get into the Server space. Something a lot more valuable to ARM than whatever royalties they’d get from Nuvia in a few years. From the video it’s sounding that’s not the case or even something kinda opposite is. I’m not read up enough on this case to have a solid opinion but I’m getting Oracle vibes…

Most likely they will reach an agreement outside of the court.

ARM standing in its own way is never going to change.

I assume when you say "Arm" at around 11:20 and 16:40 you meant "Apple"?

At 16:38 did you mean to say Apple instead of Arm?

It looks like Patrick did not get his usual overdose of coffea before recording that video lol It almost feels like he is talking in slow-motion lol

Long comment warning! This is interesting (to me at least) because I've often wondered how ARM's ... unique? ... business model will impact the acquisition of startups, as it's quite well known that in business the chaos of little companies is (for better or worse ... mostly worse) temporary, and in the end big fish eat little fish and bigger fish eat big fish until the mammoth sharks dominate E V E R Y T H I N G. Whereas ARM's licensing approach ... doesn't really fit these seas. So this lawsuit ... on the one hand ARM isn't being a bad guy for litigation in that they must protect the integrity of their licensing that is their business model. On the other hand, it is most definitely shooting themselves in the foot because, as said, it's a business model that doesn't really fit these seas, and the more they defend it with loaded arms, the more they scare their customers. If ARM isn't stupid (which, again, they developed a business model that doesn't fit their ambitions, so this is highly questionable) ARM will eschew strict license adherence and find a way to amicably forgive, grandfather in, or renegotiate the licenses in a way that Qualcom "wins", BEFORE this actually gets too far into trial, and the litigation gets dropped. This way they don't scare their customers and show future customers that ARM isn't a complete pushover and will defend its business, but can also be a good guy about tricky situations. That ARM is only scary when rampant abuse is involved, and as this isn't a case of rampant abuse, it can come to a happy ending that isn't scary. However, as ARM's business acumen is ... questionable ... I wouldn't place bets on this being the outcome. If ARM pushes this, right or wrong, in the end they're going to lose money, even if the win the award of being a Technically Correct Pedant. Because RISC-V is showing that ARM isn't the only way, and the last thing that ARM needs is to scare its customers into joining hands to pave the road for RISC-V. But even if that's what happens, that's ARM's problem. Whether ARM or RISC is better for consumers is a different topic entirely. LOL But if *I* were ARM, I would not only be looking to Good Guy in a new licensing agreement for Qualcom that both sides can live with, but I'd be re-examining and iteratively improving my licensing business model to be flexible and friendly to reduce the RISC of this ARMs race.

I would love to see a powerful ARM powered laptop or desktop. We already have server arm cpus so i understand qualcomm's direction

If that is true and ARM can claim IP through the support it gave a company that is licensing it's tech, then that can prove to be a very dangerous precedent for all support contracts in R&D.

It seems that Qualcomm have stuck their heads in the sand with the ARM licensing. They've just done the "it'll be alright" move and probably them and the Nuvia people have "group-thinked" their way to believing that it will. The McDonald's comparison is valid. That said, it shouldn't be difficult to resolve and they should do so for all concerned - except, that is, for the lawyers involved.

Biting , the best way to test how good is the silicon

Wow , we got a Phd and a JD. Then "Red shirt Jeff" was going to spoil everything!. Good thing you guys are upstairs. Hehe.

Kind of crazy that this has gotten away from the server chips which Nuvia was founded to create.

Greetings to Jeff!

Oh, I didn't even know you were a youtuber(until now), I thought you were just one of Leonard French's Patrons.

Companies using arm were already looking at risc V. This surely only serves to accelerate that effort in all companies. No surprise sifive are sponsoring, they must be on an upswing for every arm lawsuit

It feels like any new semiconductor startup will avoid using ARM as a base. If there's any sort of new startup here, they will focus on RISC-V. I'd say any new "NUVIA" type of startup that is doing anything big will avoid using ARM to avoid these types of lawsuits. ARM has already poisoned the well.

QCOM has been exclusively working with MSFT for four years on Windows on ARM. It isn’t completed. It seems neither side is serious on this effort. The exclusivity ends soon that opens the door to more vendors to jump in.

I'm rooting for QCOM, I would love to see some competition in the processor space. however, QCOM needs to adopt a more intel like model where they don't force customers to use QCOM power devices. their power portfolio is weak. Battery chargers suck, PMICs are inefficient, they need better supporting devices to succeed in the long run.

This is such a rookie M&A mistake, I'm almost shocked. Almost because I've seen this level of legal incompetence a couple times at major tech firms in the last couple years. I'd love to know if this was Arm's in house council or outside council that 'oofed'. It's not even legal's fault as this kind of thing is covered in most MBA/CFA programs.

I have to admit that I am confused as to why Qualcomm didn't just licence ARM v9 in the first place since they already have an experienced team of engineers in house. That would have saved them from all this legal messing around and would probably have cost a whole lot less than buying out a company (let alone the legal fees).

I'd be concerned that Arm's behaviour might be anti-competitive as well. Are they essentially saying that they can decide that Qualcomm cannot sell this kind of product. It shouldn't have got to court, ultimately it's going to hurt Arm and push more companies towards RISC-V (in the longer term). Either way, the IP should not be destroyed, human effort shouldn't be wasted in that way just because Arm has a bad take.

I love the origin of ARM, I like the history of it. I dislike the company that purchased it and wants to put a dark cloud over itself. Requesting that qualcomm destroy all of it's technology relating to nuvia, most likely either leading to a strong arm in licensing renewal that hurts everything down the line or a complete destruction of this technology. It's looking like it's a maximize profits at all costs and or destroy everything in your way to achieve that goal. I would love if this accelerates risc-v and it becomes the defacto standard overtaking arm. Risc has proven itself time and again, so it's a good technology that should be pursued and not have a ruthless company that will hurt everyone to get what it wants. I know licenses can be tricky and companies want to get their fair share, but this scorched earth approach is insidious and i'm glad people are taking note and it's making people wary of wanting to continue with arm.

I wonder if I could build a company that makes RISC-V processors customized for your desire.

the whole 5 seconds of background music nukes an entire 1 hour video equivalent :D - but i'm 99.5% licensed to do this ...

You can tell right away just how nerdy this channel is: the number of subscribers. Wow. We need to boost the stats up to the moon!!!

Sounds like ARM just wants to double dip. Regardless of the outcome this absolutely poisons the well. It shows no matter how much work gets done on top of ARM's IP that ARM still views it as theirs and they'll reneg whenever they want once your work becomes more valuable than it was when previously negotiated. That's like selling your house to a 2nd party then suing a 3rd party when they rebuy that house for a higher price after the 2nd party put a bunch of work into it. Arm's been spending too much time with Apple and wants their cut every step down the line.

What's this news that Charlie from SemiAnalysis is hinting at ? Behind a paywall it is unfortunately but seemingly it's hinted that Qualcomm just shut down Nuvia ?? Is that true ?

At 11:27 do you mean Apple and Nvidia?

I feel like ARM would have been better off being ok with the acquisition. Qualcom could have scaled and sold units. Obviously their agreement reflected the scalability. I'm sure ARM would have preferred Nuvia to scale at the higher royalty.

ARM for Server? Did Huawei already have that?

What a shame it would be if Qualcomm is made to delete the Nuvia core… I hope it does not come to that, that would make zero sense for both sides…

I'm very bullish on Arm's architecture, their IPC and perf/watt is just insane given the tiny caches. But this case just doesn't seem right, Arm should not be allowed any claim to Nuvia's IP. It reminds me of Oracle vs Google/Android except ISA compatibility instead of API compatibility. I hope Arm's case gets thrown out quickly

I bet this lawsuit will increase interest for RISC-V R&D.

The thing about poisoning the well is that ARM is suing on of its customers which is generally a bad thing even if there are legal reasons for doing so in this case. I do think this move was a to force a negotiating position but such business deals are always best behind closed doors as the ugliness of arguments is kept from the public eye. I would argue that the worst case and something will likely happen to some degree going forward is a modification of how ARM licenses its IP. Worst case is that ARM stops offering new ALA agreements and increases pricing on their TLA agreements. The other wild card in this disagreement is that ARM too was attempting to be acquired by nVidia. Discovery in the ARM vs. Qualcomm disagreement has the potential to reach into various documents exchanged between ARM and nVidia as part of their failed transaction.

like mommy and daddy are fighting but dont worry guys arm and qcom still love you. lol the real reason is apple doesnt want qcom to take their chip devs. they want to cost qcom more money.

I read what legal filings that are on line. Nowhere did ARM state in their deal with Nuvia that if Nuvia is acquired that the deal they made with ARM is off. Both sides have weaknesses in their cases. Destroying 3 years of development is not going to happen. The Judge will send it to mediation and eventually Qualcomm will give ARM some money to go away.

Patrick and Dr. Ian. Now get Wendell there and 3 of my fave server guys are in one vid and I won't be happier 😊

I think Ampere is in a much better position. If they wait, they can use the time to make their systems better. If they make a deal, they can avoid all the pitfalls that Qualcomm created.

Imagine if they'd gone the RISC-V route, and the software support looked hopeful.

To those engineer and creative individual, it must have been a headache. Their hard work become investor property and they only received a monthly salary + they are subject to be fired(but they contributed more than the investor). Arm will never invent since they play this royalties business scheme and if they did, 10 years already passed and we still looking at an arm architecture with a miniscule improvement instead of inventing new way, just like INTEL.

RISC-V is the freeway!

" He is not the designer, he is a very naughty boy, now go away "

From what I've read & You say here Qualcoms Money people have gone through the books of Nuvia said whow that's a big licence fee going to ARM we have ARM licenses and then gone to the league team said if we don't negotiate a licence with ARM will our current Licences cover us using ip league team said 90-98% so money team then decided to save money and not purchase the necessary licences on the grounds ARM get lots if cash from Qualcom & A court case would loom bad. ARM intern said fine not willing to talk we will take you to court maybe that will get you to talk to us and that's where we are now. The only winners from this will loyers.

I am a professional digital IC Designer that has worked for the likes of e.g. Intel, and when it comes to companies you do not wish to work with, it's exactly 2 names: Qualcomm and ARM. Besides the fact that I think that ARM IP isn't even that great (the RTL code does not impress me much tbh), their licensing ideas become more and more ridiculous. Qualcomm on the other hand by now is seemingly more a law firm than a chip company, which is a shame. Because their silicon is usually pretty advanced and great, but the way Qualcomm treats basically anyone outside of their own walls is a 100% model of how NOT do do it. I seriously hope RISC-V rises to a point where ARM becomes worthless or at least so pressured that they come back to earth with what they are demanding. They are trying to milk this instruction set to the limit, but frankly, competation is on the rise. So especially alianating your architecture license customers like that will backfire big time. It just takes Qualcomm, Apple or even Intel/AMD to really embrace RISC-V and ARM is dead. And being an extendable RISC-architecture, it is really mostly about re-engineering the decoder. Many intstructions are similar enough to turn a very efficient ARM design into a RISC-V design.